The Amnesty programme, managed by office of the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta Amnesty last Friday graduated some 30 ex-gunmen and women from a nine-month rigorous training in fashion and design, with over 90 percent of them honed to tap into the fast emerging N2 trillion Nigerian haute couture industry.
The youngsters, 25 of whom were ladies and five males, who began a hostel live-in school based training in February this year, were trained by the Fate Foundation, Port Harcourt, a non-profit outfit created in March 2000, in response to the challenges of young people, job creation and the development of small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) within the Nigerian environment, using its rich repertoire of expertise in building entrepreneurs via its partnerships.
Ebiere Ayama, who represented the Amnesty program coordinator, Paul Boroh (a retired Army Brig-Gen.), said the office, with the tacit support of President Muhammadu Buhari administration, undertook the intensive training programme for the ex-militants to make them useful members of the society, in continuation of the Federal Government amnesty offer to militants in 2009.
The Niger Delta Amnesty program director urged the delegates to make good use of the rare privilege of being honed in fashion and designing vocation, and create wealth for themselves by getting into the nitty-gritty of fashion and design, a flourishing non-oil industry with huge potentials of GDP contribution.
Speaking at the end-of-training graduation ceremony, which held at the University of Port Harcourt’s Business School on Sani Abacha Road, GRA Phase 3, Port Harcourt, Ngozi Akpati, Fate Foundation Port Harcourt’s program manager, said they had been part of training delegates (ex-militants) in the amnesty initiative from its inception in 2010.
Till date Fate Foundation Port Harcourt has trained and empowered over 100 amnesty delegates (ex-militants) in various business areas like commodity shop, sales of building materials, fashion design, sales of electronics, amongst others. During the empowerment process, the beneficiaries (ex-militants) are also trained on entrepreneurship [how to handle the business side of their vocation] for a period varying from two weeks to three months.
Akpati informed that FATE Foundation also undertook an entrepreneurship a one-week drilling for the fashion design trainees at the end of their nine months course; adding that the essence was to create a platform for the young people in the fashion design industry, equipping them with skills to run a business in fashion design, in order to earn a living.
Perhaps like earlier trainees, the fashion design graduands might undergo Fate Foundation’s 1-year mentoring, monitoring and evaluation, to ensure that their businesses are steady and successful.
Christopher Ebiwari, coordinator of the fashion design training told Business South-South/ South East that he found most of the delegates particularly a bunch interesting young people desirous of making a difference.
“About 90 percent of them were quite passionate about grabbing great skills from the trainers. Two delegates were quite outstanding,” he said.
For Jefferson Akharaiyi, one of the graduands, who was said to have particularly performed excellently well, in a vote of thanks on behalf of his colleagues, thanked the Amnesty program office for grooming them and lauding President Buhari for sustaining the Niger Delta Amnesty initiative.
Akharaiyi, who made fantastic clothes designs, told Business South-South/ South East that he intends to hone his skills further by attaching with some of established fashion designing companies in the country, so as to inch his name on the business of haute culture.
He also said he would be training and imparting the skills to other young people around his community, as that was what their training entailed.
